General zachary taylor captures monterey

Establishing a base of operations at Camargo, Taylor spent most of the summer waiting for reinforcements. In July, militia regiments which had been hastily organized following the War Department's call for volunteers began to arrive.

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The troops were generally ill-supplied, ill-prepared, and lacking in discipline. Failing to take adequate sanitation precautions, they soon began to suffer from dysentery and other diseases. By the time Taylor began his march south in September, 1, had died. Ampudia decided, however, to make a stand against the U. Surrounded by low foothills in a valley of the Sierra Madres, Ampudia believed the city of 20, inhabitants to be a more strategically important and more readily defensible location.

Numbering 6, regulars and volunteers, Taylor's army reached the outskirts of the city on September On September 21, Taylor probed an approach of the city from the east, while sending William Worth, a former commandant of cadets at West Point, on a flanking movement to the southwest to cut off the Mexican army's escape route. Worth succeeded in doing so, and gained steady ground against Mexican hilltop fortifications, seizing Federation Hill on the 21st and the Bishop's Palace the following day.

On the evening of the 22nd Ampudia ordered his troops to take up defensive positions within the city, setting the stage for bitter house-to-house fighting on the 23rd. On the morning of September 24, U. With his army running low on ammunition after three days of fighting and discipline beginning to break down, Taylor allowed Ampudia's troops to evacuate the city, taking with them their weapons and one six-gun battery.

Since poor communication made it impossible for either general to obtain instructions from his government at short notice, Taylor and Ampudia signed an eight-week armistice, during which Taylor's forces would not advance farther than fifty miles to the south. The agreement further stipulated that it could be rescinded if either government found its terms unsatisfactory.

The reputation of both generals suffered as a result of the battle, at least as far as their respective governments were concerned.